I feel guilty when it comes to Gorgeous Bully. No matter how much I try to keep up to date, I always seem to be playing catch up with their releases, getting to know their previous work while the new album goes unheard. Rest assured though, I always catch up and I’m always glad I did.
This is partly down to my own inadequacies as a bona fide capital-B Blogger, but it also says a lot about how Gorgeous Bully operate. They put out their music on a pay-what-you-can basis without fanfare, forgoing the carpet-bombing PR emails to presumably focus on writing and recording consistently impressive songs. In an artistic world where shouting “look at me!” the loudest for the longest period of time is one of the only ways to try and Reach Your Goals and Make It, the Gorgeous Bully model is as refreshing as it is admirable. It’s less two fingers to the music industry than a turn of the back, a quiet disinterest in the oh-so-bright but oh-so-brief lights of traditional musical success.
I say all of this because Gorgeous Bully have everything that would be required to break into some degree of mainstream success (if not primetime Radio 1 then at least appearing in the NME every other week). Their new album, Smiling, Laughing, is supposedly a collection of odds and sods from the GB catalogue. Some are old, some are new, some might be demos for future hits, but all feel like products of care, attention and hard work.
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Smiling, Laughing is thirteen shades of sadness. Grief, melancholy, frustration, gloom, heartache… they are all represented in what is a varied mix of styles and tempos. Opener ‘Misery Loves Company’ plays like the soundtrack to a walk through an apathetic city on a grey day, while ‘5AM’ and ‘Don’t Ask Why’ have a far more upbeat jangly feel, not exactly joyous but lined with nostalgic affection, a fondness for old sorrows. In contrast to this sense of distance other songs are immediate and raw. Take for example the piano-driven closer ‘I Wish I Knew How To Love’, a proper lament for a lost love.
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You can buy Smiling, Laughing on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp. Also, check out the Gorgeous Bully track on the 80N7 compilation we wrote about a few weeks ago.